The sophomore album by L.A. quintet Everest, On Approach, bears little of the twangy Americana that flavored 2008's Ghost Notes, but that doesn't mean the working-class rockers are changing their style.

“Oh, we still wear flannel shirts,” frontman Russell Pollard says. “Because we're too broke to get anything else and they've been in the back of our closets forever.”

On the album, recorded at Prairie Sun Studios in Cotati (a favorite of Tom Waits) and released in May, Everest makes straight-ahead rock sound sound vital, owing to the alternately buoyant (“Let Go”) and heart-rending (“Unfortunate Sea”) songs and the ace musicianship of veteran players J. Soda, Joel Graves, Elijah Thomson and Davey Latter.

“We called the album On Approach because what we're doing is a process,” Pollard says.”We're not trying to sound like anything, and if it's not Americana anything, it's not that we didn't want to sound like that. We just went the direction the songs took us.”

Having spent much of the past two years on the road, Everest plays a hometown show tonight at the Bootleg Theater.

Elsewhere: Rickie Lee Jones plays a free show at the Santa Monica Pier; Carina Round rocks the Hotel Cafe; and Proximal Records celebrates the release of its “Narrative of City” compilation with a show at the Echo.

Also: Steve Barton & the Oblivion Click (ex-Translator) as part of International Pop Overthrow at the Echo; Rumspringa at the 3 Clubs; Switchfoot at the Huntington Beach Pier as part of the U.S. Open of Surfing; Seasons and Kitten at Pershing Square downtown; Lady Sinatra and the Binges at the Viper Room; Les Blanks at the Silverlake Lounge; and Lisa Loeb at the Canyon Club.

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